


one step

by ndnickerson



Category: Nancy Drew - Keene
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Married Couple, Minor Character Death, Post-Canon, Reverse Cowgirl, Romance, Sexual Content, Woman on Top
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-28
Updated: 2009-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-05 10:24:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ndnickerson/pseuds/ndnickerson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She keeps getting stuck between.</p>
            </blockquote>





	one step

"Shh."

Nancy had stopped sleeping. After the funeral was over, all the relatives gone, the sympathy cards received, the shock had worn off. Life was supposed to start making sense again.

And then, every morning, when she woke, after struggling to find a few hours of peace the night before, it had been to the slowly growing certainty that something was wrong. Then the universe would shift. Then she would remember. It was like hearing the news all over again.

Ned had tried to be sympathetic. It hadn't worked all that well. He would ask what she wanted for dinner or if she wanted to watch Jeopardy or what time she wanted the alarm set to go off, and she would lose it, knowing that he wouldn't lash back at her, that he was safe. He had been the one to hold her as she collapsed, stricken, from the news that her father had been in the hotel lobby when the bomb had gone off, and she hadn't been there to save him.

Now she was on the back porch, looking up at the stars, and Ned's hands were on her shoulders. Her face was wet. She had discovered that tears had weight, that they rose unbidden with every freshly recalled memory, and that she couldn't make herself forget, for fear that she would have finally lost him again.

"Come to bed."

She wiped her face resolutely. "I have to go back."

She didn't have to see his face; his voice was enough. "No."

The anger was better than anything else she had felt so far, and it roared back, filled her. "He could still be alive!" she shot back, wrenching away from him, standing. Trembling. "You know how easy it is to fake that kind of thing!"

He struggled for a second. "I don't know of anyone who can fake a skull," he replied, and he wasn't unsympathetic, but he was tired.

She opened her mouth to scream at him. She wasn't going to give up; she didn't care if she never saw Ned again, if it meant that one day she would find her father. Alive. They had found a skull and part of his arm, and the DNA had matched, the rest of it was too badly burned to test, and she had stopped listening. Even insanity was better than listening to another clipped clinical description of the ways they had proven that she had failed.

That he was gone.

"I know," Ned said, so quietly that she stopped, her brow furrowing. "And if you have to be mad, be mad at me."

She shook her head, clamping her lips tight together. He took a step toward her.

"I should have known," she whispered. "It should have been me."

He told her that it wasn't her fault, over and over. He told her that she wasn't to blame, his arm wrapped solidly around her waist, supporting most of her weight as they went upstairs. He told her that there was no way she could have known, as he found the pills the doctor had prescribed for her, placed one in her palm and a glass of water in the other, as she sat on the edge of their bed. The light from the lamp cast her face in shadow.

"No," she whispered, and put them down.

"Then let me help you feel something other than this," he whispered.

He sat behind her, her back to his chest, and rested his lips at the base of her neck, against her spine, as he pulled her into an embrace. His touch never left her; he started at the points of her shoulders and drew slow circles over her arms, laced his fingers between hers, hooked his feet around her calves and slowly opened her legs, and she shivered at how cold his feet were. He touched her knees, cupping his warm palms against her outer thighs, sliding up to her hips, under her shirt and then against her belly. She arched as he brushed his knuckles against her abs.

"Tell me you love me."

"I love you," he answered immediately. He pushed her shirt above her breasts and cupped them loosely, still. "I love you."

She closed her eyes. He was aroused, and they had been celibate for two weeks. He took his hands away and she groaned in soft frustration until he pulled her shirt off and covered her with his palms again. Her nipples were already taut; his mouth was against her shoulder, and he could see what he was doing to her, just like she could feel what this was doing to him.

He had been shaken at the funeral, too. Like he hadn't been able to believe it was real either.

She choked out a sob and her husband's hand slid down her belly, under her panties, sliding down between her lips and she shifted her hips as his thumb traced over her clit and his index and middle finger curved up inside her. She sucked in a long breath and his other hand was slowly, gently flicking her nipple, and his fingers were long, teasing her with shallow strokes before he plunged home. She threw her head back, bracing on the heels of her hands to rub her ass against his erection, tilting her hips to allow him deeper access.

"It's okay," he murmured.

"Now," she demanded, rocking urgently against him. His fingertips brushed her g-spot and she groaned, every nerve tightening.

Then he slid out of her and pushed her panties and sleep shorts down, and she managed to wrestle his boxers off and then she mounted him, guiding him and taking him deep with a single smooth thrust of her hips, her hands on his knees. He ran the backs of his fingers down the curve of her ass as she rose, trembling, then let gravity drive her hard against his cock. She gasped and did it again, again, and the grief was still there, black, waiting, but she didn't give it a chance to find words, and she wanted to see Ned's face but that meant stopping this, and the angle of his cock when she rode him reverse was almost perfect.

"Nan," he groaned, grasping her hips and forcing her in a harder thrust, his hips rising off the bed to find hers. She ground down harder and grabbed his hand, leading his fingers to her clit, and as he frantically stroked her, the rhythm of his hips growing ever more quick and hard under hers, she screamed. She felt his fingers dig brutally against her clit and she bucked, her orgasm coming hard, leaving her trembling around him as he followed.

"God," he whispered, and once he was finished, once she had stopped shaking, she slowly pushed up on her knees, then laid down, curled up against his chest, her lips brushing his neck.

"Thanks," she whispered.

"Feel better?"

"I feel numb," she whispered. "And tired. Maybe I can get some sleep now." She kissed his neck. "And when I wake up, if you fuck me again, maybe I'll be able to forget a little longer."

He slipped his arms around her. "You have to move on to the next step sometime."

She closed her eyes. "No," she sighed.

And it was only a little while, but it was enough.


End file.
